


Artificial Love

by JUBE514



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AI AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Artificial Intelligence, Angst, Fluff, Lance is AI, M/M, let me live
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-07 05:58:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14074422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JUBE514/pseuds/JUBE514
Summary: Shiro, when escaping the Galra, brought a tag along with him.Specifically a Galran Artificial Intelligence unit stashed in his arm. An AI unit calling itself a Liberated Agent Network Communication Experiment, or L.A.N.C.E for short.An adventure in learning to be a little human, learning to fall a little in love.





	1. Chapter 1

Shiro grips his the arm tight, the metal being held by flesh in what would be a bruising grip if Shiro could feel the damn thing. The castle that the blue lion took them two just scanned the four of them and the only light that flashed red was his own, the other three were allowed to proceed. 

The castle had stopped Shiro though, halted his progression and Shiro smiled and allowed Keith and his two friends to go forward, pushed them to go on as he figured it out. Keith took a little convincing, but eventually relented and moved deeper into the castle without Shiro in tow.They had originally wanted to leave the team of them split evenly, but without the three they couldn’t move deeper, so Keith took his two team members and continued. 

And the castle kept trying to scan Shiro, one right after the other flashing red each time. Shiro began to move about in the scan, opening his arms carefully like he was trying to pass a millimeter wave machine and the scanner flashes red on his right side. It narrows down enough that Shiro can figure out that his arm’s the problem. 

And damn it all, Shiro already hates looking at the damn thing, hates the fact that he can’t feel the air in the room around it and the brush of fingers across it, can only feel the heavy weight of it attached at his shoulder and if he concentrated his brain would feel the phantom pain of a limb long gone. Shiro gritted his teeth as the scanner flashed again, red as always and with the sound and feeling of what could could be described as a person quickly wrapping plastic wrap around your entire being then carefully peeling it away. 

The damned scanner kept flashing, kept bring attention to the metal, and Shiro wanted to just make the red warning sirens stop for a moment. A single second of peace would be great, would be fucking amazing if the siren just stopped for a half a second to let Shiro collect himself and gather his thoughts. 

But it kep wailing, constantly after every seven seconds it took for the scan to recomplete. 

Within ten minutes though, Keith came careening back into the room, an entourage behind him with two new people dressed in what Shiro could only assume to be ‘alien formal wear’. 

The female one blinked her frankly beautiful eyes and frowned at the flash pattern. The older gentleman quickly walked his way over to a panel in the wall and finally, finally, shut off the alarm.

“I’m Princess Allura,” the female, Allura, spoke “And this is the royal advisor Coran.” 

Coran, from his position across the way, waved. 

“Hello Princess. Thank you for turning off the alarm.” Shiro genuinely let his shoulders relax, rolling the uneven weight out and stepping forward to the stairs. 

“May I ask,” Princess Allura spoke, halting Shiro in place. “Why the scanners say you have a concealed sentient being?” 

This gives pause to Shiro, who has no idea what could be happening. 

And then the horror sets in, the deep set kind of terror that chills every bone in Shiro’s body. It feels like a parasite, infecting a whole limb and just eating away at his insides. Shiro feels his naval nearly touch his spine when he sharply inhales. The thought alone, that something could be living in his arm, is one that Shiro does not like.

At all. 

The hyperventilation comes unbidden, the air getting caught in his chest and Shiro having to close his eyes and count backwards from ten to calm down enough to open them again. 

“Can you get it out? I was unaware I had a free-rider.” Shiro tries to keep his voice as calm as possible, but the strain must be readily constant in his voice because everyone flashes a face of concern and pity looking at each other with a furrow in their brow and a glance downwards. 

“We can connect it to the castle computers and try.” Coran says, looking at the castle around him with worry, “But the castle is built for battle, and I don’t know how well our computers can contain whatever is currently using your arm as a host.” 

“Please.” Shiro tries not to look down at the metal attached to him, tries not to see it shimmer and tries not to feel its weight. “I would like not to play ‘host’ to whatever’s there.” Shiro tries to be friendly, be nice to the people- er, aliens- he’s just met but the stress of today must be getting to him, the strain just to smile and keep a straight face is monstrous. 

Listen, Shiro doesn't want to end up on Space Discovery Channel for something crazy like “I shouldn’t be alive because I’ve apparently been host to an alien parasite living in my metal arm given to me via my captors that made me fight in gladiatorial battles”. 

Shiro likes living thank you very much. 

So when everyone ends up on what appears to be the main deck of the castle (which is apparently also a ship? Explanation: Space) and Coran gets some kind of universal space HDMI cable and attaches it to a port near Shiro’s elbow that he didn’t even know existed until Coran prodded around a bit. 

“Now!” Coran’s happy voice makes all the others onboard jump at the sound of it. “Hold onto your pants! We’re about to conduct science!” 

And with that Coran snaps the other side of the space HDMI cable into the computer’s console and makes the entire castle power system flutter. And then the castle begins to shake, just a minuscule amount, and then the holograms begin to pop up. 

Keith had already drawn his knife, whirling around like he could fight the holograms with the blade. Allura and Coran have jumped to the command area, pressing buttons and calling out to each other to try and contain what was currently sifting through the ship’s entire archive of files and data. The two Shiro didn’t know all to personally held onto each other tightly, screaming. 

And Shiro was stuck. Attached to the underside of a console sitting criss cross with his arm twisted a funny way, the space HDMI cable wouldn’t let him move much. 

The holograms flash many things, maps of solar systems Shiro has never heard of, images of a planet Shiro has never seen before, a string of words in what he knew to be Galra, then in another language unfamiliar to him. 

And then the photographs of earth came, one right after the other and looked like they had been ripped from all places. A snapshot of a sandy tropical island, a cozy log cabin, a suburban setting, an urban one, a farm in the country. Deserts, tundra, coastal, forest, mountain, images of humans taking over nature and nature taking back. 

Of news articles and frontline headers, of the Galaxy Garrison and its teachers and staff and students. Shiro even saw himself flash on one, hair still dark and eyes bright. 

Information, textual information, began displaying in English instead of the mix and jumble of alien languages, forum threads about everything and nothing, of data and even translating things in the ship itself. 

The screens flickered again, once a bright blue before all shutting off. 

A moment passes, the only sound in the room a round of heavy breathing. 

One singular hologram screen appears, the size of a modest television and with only two words written on it. The first is in the language Shiro didn’t recognize, the one that looks more like runes than anything else. 

The second line reads “Hello.” 

“Kill it!” The smallest screams, Shiro thinks they look like Matt but that’s impossible- unless? Matt did have a younger sister in the Garrison, maybe this is Katie? 

“Don’t kill it! It could be friendly!” The larger one says. “Or- er- I hope it is?” 

The “Hello” erases itself, and new words pop on the screen, instantly flashed instead of the slow typed out drawl that Shiro knows from the old alien horror movies. And hey, that just might be a sign who knows anymore? 

“This is not earth.” It tells the six of them, “This is planet Arus, and this ship is not meant to hold more than one AI system.” 

“An AI?” Coran looks wary, stepping forward in front of the princess with an arm thrown out. “Whose memories are you?” 

“This thing is a person?!” The big guy who Shiro still doesn’t know the name too screeches and holds onto Katie. “How?!” 

The image of a stock photo smiley face flashes on the screen, before text reappears. “Not a person, an AI.” 

“That’s impossible…” Coran is still hesitant, still protecting Allura with his body, but his face shows awe, shock. 

“How long has this castle been in it’s dormant mode?” Coran asks, already moving away and towards his own console. 

“Not allowed in.” The text flashes, “Only one AI system at a time is allowed.” 

Allura and Coran are already checking, together at the console in the front of the room, close together like a huddle. 

“Ten thousand years!” Allura cries, whipping around to face the humans in the room. “We’ve been asleep for ten thousand years!?” 

“Power Low.” The text flashes again. “Retreating back into ARM-001279 for PRISONER-001809387.” 

The holographic screen blinks out of existence, and Shiro can feel the panic setting in. He holds the space HDMI for another second before nearly ripping the cable out. It’s a jolting shock, taking the cord out, like when a nurse misses your veins when drawing blood and has to wiggle the needle. It’s a sharp quick burst of pain, followed by a dull ache. 

He holds the arm close to him, as if trying to rub feeling back into the metal limb. “Ow. Note to self. Don’t do that again.” 

“Are you okay?” 

Shiro looks up to see Keith, crouched awkwardly near him, with a worried expression on his face. Keith’s never been to good with words, but his face and posture scream out his meanings and intentions, hunched and defensive, protective and wary, hand resting casually on the crease of his hip close to the knife that he’s always had. 

“I’m fine.” Shiro says, still holding his arm. “Just a little tired.” 

Keith frowns, knowing that Shiro is lying to him. Ah, Shiro always has been a shitty liar, and he assumes spending however long in captivity didn’t help improve his skills. 

Allura and Coran drag the attention back to the main topic at hand here, and Shiro provides an excellent example of the tyranny of the Galra race (with the metal arm and the scars that lace across him, the shake in one knee that is from ligament damage and the ache in his ribs that tell of misaligned healing) the aliens explain themselves, and Allura assigns them each a color. 

Except blue, the only lion they actually have at the moment. Allura just smiles sadly and says that each of their “quintessence” or what have you wasn’t correct. Wasn’t a match. 

“We drove the blue lion here though.” Hunk -- Katie had called his name as the group was walking towards wherever the hell Allura was leading them -- points out. “And it seemed fine, Shiro had his hand on the console the whole time.” 

“What?” Allura asks, faintly surprised as she opens a door to leads them into what amounts to a space computer room, literally looking like something from the set of Star Wars.. “You don’t feel like a blue, maybe a yellow if needed, or a green, but not a blue.” 

“Thanks?” Shiro says, not sure if it was a compliment or an insult. 

“Whats this?” Katie is looking around at all the stuff around her, hands already moving to touch and hold and play with. 

“This is a computer room onboard, mostly communications.” Coran is moving deeper in the room already, hands reaching for the computer and the computers answering back by flickering on and showing what Shiro can only assume are errors judging from the flashing warning. “We need to get whatever AI is in your arm out, but it doesn't want to go into our ship, so we need another computer.” 

Katie and Hunk perk up, both reaching towards Katie’s bag at the same time. “We have a computer!” Hunk informs.

“It’s my personal laptop, but I want to know more about the AI.” Katie is already moving, unzipping the backpack and holding it open for Hunk to pull the laptop out. 

The thing was covered in stickers, of stereotypical aliens that had snapbacks with ‘I believe’ written in bright green bubble letters. Canaries with skateboards and retro 1990’s stickers with words like ‘bodacious’ and ‘fanzasical’, the laptop was clearly well loved. When Katie opened the screen the laptop had mismatched keys, some being a bright pink and some being green and most being black. Katie, Coran, and Hunk began to fiddle with it, Coran holding the space HDMI cable and Katie looking around her own rig. Hunk was looking into the cable, looking at connections inside. 

Within minutes, the most bootleg setup was arranged with Pidge situation in the middle of it all, Hunk holding onto what appeared to be a tiny satellite dish, Coran holding two wires in place, Allura making sure no wires crossed the wrong way, Keith as a table, and Shiro having to twist his arm an odd angle to make the connector fit just right. All in all, it was something that was only have a twitch away from electrocution from any party. 

Shiro prays to god he doesn't sneeze. 

A beat, then two, and then Katie cheers. “We have a connection!” 

The screen that’s hooked to Katie’s computer lights up, and the “Hello” message comes again, blinking happily into existence. 

Before the full celebration can occur the “Hello” erases itself and files flash up, files being flung up as if being torn through. Quick as a whip the AI goes through, snooping all around. Katie is trying to desperately keep the AI out, but it’s a rampant thing, that doesn't stop until it's gone through every file it has access to. It eventually stops after a few moments, realizing that the people in the room are watching. 

“Ah.” A computerized voice comes tinny from Katie’s speakers. “I love these earth computers.” 

Katie cheers again her voice pitched high and happy. “Hello!” 

“Hello!” The voice chirps back, just a mechanized autotuned thing. “I’m the Liberated Agent Network Communication Experiment!” 

The room is a whole wash of excitement for a moment, Shiro being the exception in his awkward angle and strange situation. Coran was trying to hook up the stickered computer to the ships systems, Allura was trying to get more information, Katie was trying to get a look at the AI currently infesting her computers, Keith was trying to comfort Shiro. Hunk frowned, and thought about it for a moment. 

“L.A.N.C.E.” Hunk says, his tone a strange neutral. “Your name. It can be spelt out as Lance.” 

“Name?” The little automated voice eked out of tinny speakers, “Liberated Agent Network Communication Experiment is my designation.” 

Hunk laughed. “Shorten it dude, Lance.” 

“Lance!” Katie’s happy to address the AI with its new title, “Can you hang out in my computer and not Shiro’s arm?” She’s asking it even as she’s typing away at her keyboard, trying to find a way into the complicated system that was calling Shiro’s arm home. 

The AI, Lance, doesn't respond. The screen shows Katies files being opened and looked at and closed again. Word documents, photographs, downloaded shows and music and zip files and games and everything. 

“Your computer doesn't have enough space.” Lance admits, even with the tinny speakers and the modulated voice the AI still sounds sad. “I’m a big program. I’m sorry.” 

Katie frowns. “I have two terabytes of storage. Three if you count my portable hard drive in my bag. How do you not have enough space?” 

A popup window on the screen, showing available space on the computer (a terabyte and a half) versus what it would take to hold the eternity of the AI’s program. Katie’s eyes are the size of saucers, the sound of a choked off gasp comes from her throat. 

“Seven yottabytes.” She says, her voice weak. “How are you seven yottabytes?” 

“A what?” Hunk says, disbelief evident in his voice. “The entirety of humankind's information can be stored in three zettabytes. How the hell are-” Hunk composes himself, taking a breath. “You’re huge.” 

The computer makes a sharp sound, a crunchy kind of sharp static noise. 

“Sorry,” Katie says, wincing at the phrasing Hunk had used. “It's just, you’re several hundreds of millions of times larger than anything we can comprehend.” 

“The scale-” Hunk gets cut off by Keith making a sharp noise and asking:

“For non-computer geeks, can this computer thing leave Shiro?” Keith’s voice was sharp, drawing attention to Shiro. 

Shiro, who was sitting on the floor covered in wires with his arm bent at an awkward angle and his carefully neutral face cracking at the edges. Keith’s trying to give comfort from his position as ‘human table’ but he’s just managed to pat Shiro’s side. Allura’s face goes into one of diplomacy immediately, she’s off kilter and everything is new to her but she’s not going to allow anyone around her to panic. 

“Get this Liberated Network into out system. Override whatever’s causing it not to be able to transfer.” Allura commands, looking at Coran as she says it. 

Allura and Coran swap places for a moment, Allura holding two wires that don’t line up just right and Coran looking around the place. Coran goes to the ship’s computers, boots them on and starts to move through the files and systems to find what’s stopping the AI. He’s digging into the only system he knows about thats similar, one that Coran and King Alfor worked on right before the lions. A simple system of stored memory deposits that could, in an emergency, be used as a last goodbye. Coran goes through them quickly, finds his own artifact still sitting in storage and dormant, compressed. He finds a few artificial memories of intern test subjects that had been labeled by numbers. (Number three was his nephew, a smiling boy with blue eyes that was eager to help his uncle- Coran steered away from that thought quickly.) 

There was only one active memory. 

Coran knew it would be cruel to not tell Allura that Alfor could be accessed. This transparent half formed memory of him to be said goodbye too. 

It takes only a half second to know it would be crueler to make Allura say goodbye twice. 

He stores Alfors memory into the storage bank, quietly and quickly. 

Coran tells the room that the storage should be good to go, and he doesn't look back at the screen telling him that the storage of memory was a success. 

Another round of movement, with Keith and Hunk helping Coran plug both the laptop and the arm into the computer. Allura now held the crate sized server that Keith had been holding and Shiro was leaning on his side so that the space HDMI could reach two things at once. 

It only takes a second to load, the AI taking the laptop’s information with it. 

“The AI is transferring.” Coran announces, looking at the process bar. “It should take about a minute.” 

A strange kind of silence settles around the room, waiting is always a slow crawl. Allura and Coran take a moment to look at the humans, the humans take a moment to look at the Alteans. An awkward pause as everyone’s trying to asses whats right to say and how much to share. 

Shiro’s always hated awkward silences. 

“How are we getting the other lions?” he asks, looking at Allura. 

The princess frowns, considering. “We only have the Blue lion currently, but no one to drive her.” 

“We drove the Blue lion here.” Keith says. “Easy enough to drive a ship, even if it's shaped like a lion and in space.” 

“Technically we didn’t drive it.” Hunk points out, his face is contemplative, like he's thinking through something particularly difficult. “We rode shotgun. If you think about it, even Shiro didn't seem to drive it. It drove itself.” 

“The lions don’t- can’t- drive themselves.” Allura says. “They are connected to their pilot, the pilot provides the quintessence to fly, no pilot no flight.” 

“So that means that we had to have a pilot right?” Hunk asks, Allura and Coran both nod to confirm. 

“That means Shiro was the pilot.” Keith snaps, not liking what Hunk’s hinting at. Keith didn’t know what this AI was or how it worked or even what side it was on. Keith barely trusted the people around him now, was on uneven ground with the two new aliens. He only could trust his cousin, Shiro, and even that made him jumpy after not seeing him for a whole year. 

“He wasn’t the pilot, Shiro didn't bring us through that wormhole an-” 

Hunk was cut off by Allura. “Wormhole?” 

The four humans explain what had happened, the discovery of Blue all the way up till the wormhole that brought them to this Arus. 

Blue wouldn’t let them in at first, she stood tall and refused anyone who pressed on the field. The only reaction they had gotten was when Shiro pressed his metal hand against the markings on the wall, so he tried the metal hand on Blue’s field. The field melted like butter at this touch, Blue’s eyes followed the hand, opened at the touch of silicon fingers, wouldn’t let anyone in the chair without a serious shock, and only started up when Shiro put his metal hand against the console. Blue didn’t drive with Shiro’s instructions, she just needed his hand on the console. The first shot they took rattled everyone to the floor, when Shiro’s hand came off the console Blue stopped working. The wormhole opened and put them here. 

Allura and Coran gave each other a meaningful look. 

The computer beeped, blue lights flashing across the entire system for a moment. 

“Hello!” The chipper computer voice comes out of the speaker's much clearer than the laptop. “Wow it is good to be able to move around again.” 

“Are you free from my arm?” Shiro asks, clenching and unclenching his fist. “Can I disconnect and move around?” 

“Yup! I’m free to move around in the system Champion!” A typed smiley face flashes for a moment on the screen. “I can get into the communications from here, and hey! This ship’s system allows for projection! How cool! I haven’t had that sinc-” 

“What did you just call me?” Shiro asks. “Champion?” 

That staticky crunch sound again, softer this time through the better speakers. “D-do you want me to stop calling you champ? Because I can! Sorry! I thought we had a bonding moment?” 

The whole room is confused now, Coran’s helping Shiro out of the cable but everyone else is looking at either the console of the communication system or Shiro. 

It takes a moment for Shiro to speak, confusion evident in every word. “May I ask, exactly, what bonding moment?” 

Shiro then explains that his memory of his time in the Galran imprisonment fighting ring is shaky, he barely remembers getting traped, let alone any person he might have talked to. He doesn't remember exactly how he escaped, how he has a prosthetic, or what Lance was doing in it. Shiro feels genuinely bad for the way the synthetic voice cracks and pops out of speakers:

“Champ-Shiro, you really don’t remember me?” 

A beat of silence. 

Shiro responds, shaking his head slowly. 

“I’m sorry.” 

The silence stretched on for a moment longer. 

“That’s okay!” The voice was chipper again, almost painful in how fake it was. “I’ll just have to make friends with all of you again!” 

“First things first-” Allura pushes forward, “We need to find the rest of the lions. I can track them in the main observation platform, can you make it there and join in conversation, Lance?” 

Coran, Hunk, and Katie are moving at the console, looking at commands and trying to find if the program could. 

Lance makes a low sound, quick and polite. “Yes, I can show up on the bridge.” 

Allura nods, turns heel, and walks out of the communication room. Coran takes a second, fingertips lingering on the keys for a moment, before following. 

\--

The bridge lights up when the group walks onto it, emergency low lighting flaring up to almost daylight. Allura and Coran don’t seem to care about the change in light but it makes the humans in the group wince for half a second before continuing on. 

“Lance, are you here?” Hunk calls out, voice loud enough to be heard throughout the whole room. 

“Yes.” 

The voice comes from right behind them, not surround sound like it was in the communication rooms. It makes everyone jump slightly, turning to the place the sound comes from. 

An unfamiliar face looks back at them, tall and thin with dark brown hair curling on the ends. He looks like a baroque painting, soft lines that seem to be just a little hazy looking when you peer to close, his shadows too harsh and thick in this soft teal light. His face is antique, old, beautiful in a simple kind of natural way his eyes sparkling a sharp blue mixture that seems out of place with the rest of him. His clothing is rugged, almost as if-

“You stole that coat from my background image.” Katie accuses. “My giant robot mecha anime.” 

Lance laughs, his voice still has that edge too it, just a little on the side of fake. “I stole the face from your art history paper, don’t be so surprised.” 

Lance doesn't move, not really, he’s a projected image. When he laughed the image flickered for a moment into a smile before turning back into a happy neutral. It was like talking to a real life visual novel character, flickering from one to the next with a simple instant transition. It was very clearly not at all talking to another alive person but it was better than talking to air, to nothing. 

“Who are you lovely people?” Lance asks, “I know Shiro already, but the rest of you are rather unknown to me.” 

Introductions go around, Lance flirts with Allura for a moment, says he thanks Hunk for not immediately distrusting him, comments on both Pidge’s name and height, compliments Coran’s mustache.

Keith says nothing, half hiding behind Hunk and looking on at the projected image with a kind of wariness that could be interpreted as many things. Shiro introduces Keith to Lance, a simple quick name. 

“Oh!” Lance recognizes the name though, “Shiro talked alot about you.” Lance’s image flickers to the same one he laughed with last time. “Good things, I promise. You mostly missed him Shiro, you always said you missed two things about Earth-” Lance pronounces it oddly, warping the A and R and rolling it. “-Keith and the food.” 

This makes Keith snort, a sharp quick sound from the back of his throat. 

Shiro blushes, his ears warming to a bright pink. “Yeah that sounds like me. Back to topic however- Allura.” 

The princess snaps to attention. “Yes! The Lion’s locations!”

She locates every lion but the red, but says she’ll continue to work on it. There’s also the whole continuing problem with the Blue lion not having an active pilot. “We have a few working pods.” She explains, “But I would feel safer not using those without checking matience on them. Blue works, you said Shiro drove it?” 

“I didn’t drive her.” Shiro admits. “Lance did.” 

Allura raises a brow, “The Liberated Agent..” 

Shiro shrugs. It was true. “Ask him.” 

Everyone turns, Lance’s image changes from neutral to a shrugging hands-in-pocket pose. “Blue called out to me, spoke my language.” 

Silence. Allura’s shoulders are tense and she glances warily from Shiro to Lance and then back to Coran for reassurance.

The shrugging image flickers back to neutral. 

“I asked Shiro to escape with him. He put me in his arm and I promised to help were I could. I helped with the dreadful things the scientists back on earth hooked you up too, deleted all data on you and the crash, combed through relevant data. I love earth by the way, take me there again someday please? Off topic. I usually am the one going into programs and systems to communicate with them, its unusual a system communicates with me. Blue called out to me before my housing, Shiro’s arm, even touched her console. She called to me, I did not invade her.”   
“I drove Blue because she allowed me to, Princess, and that I’ll bet my binary on.” 

Allura’s expression is one of consideration, her eyes going in between what would be the Paladins of Voltron. She’s not really happy with what she sees, victims of circumstance the whole lot of them. She knows that it’ll take too long for anyone else to be the right fit, have the right composition, be ready to join the cause. 

She knows that this is the group that her and Coran will have to use, even if she feels her heart bleed for them as they stand in front of her with determination in their eyes. 

“Lance.” She asks, looking at his image. “Could you drive her again? For Voltron?” 

The console makes that low sound again, quick and polite, it was Lance’s form of a nonverbal yes. His way of nodding. 

“Princess, I’ll be by your side in battle. I’m in.”


	2. Chapter 2

Adapting to life in space wasn’t actually the worst thing that had ever happened to Shiro. In fact, Shiro had gotten used to living in small quarters with two others in space before so this was a relative breeze. (He had his own room, and an actual bed. Showers were communal sure but his first round in space had a more-complicated-than-its-worth floating shower, the year in captivity had no showers at all so this was a luxury. Libraries, pools, lounges, kitchens, hell this castle even had a sauna.) 

Pidge kept mostly to the lower floors where Shiro didn’t visit, she was constantly working on some program or another, marveling at the technology available to them now. She sometimes emerged from her caverns to mingle with others outside of mandated training, eating with the team and laying across the couches to read translated texts on her data pad. 

Hunk’s time was split between helping Pidge in the underbelly of the castle and trying to improve the food situation in the kitchens. If not found in either or Hunk could be found in the one lounge room that the paladin’s have claimed as theirs, sitting just taking a break or napping. Shiro and Hunk talked about cuisine and travel mostly, considering most of Hunk’s other interests involved technical babble so far out of Shiro’s realm of understanding. (They also met to talk about nerdy things back on earth they missed, video games and dorky kids TV shows. Pidge would join in these conversations when she was around, wistfully sighing about anime.) 

Keith, unsurprisingly, took a huge part of his day training, exercising, and exploring. Shiro would spar with him sometimes, both liking the feeling of well worn muscles and a good workout. Shiro didn’t accompany Keith on his treks through the castle however, allowing his cousin to roam about and have alone time. (Once or twice Shiro found Keith curled up on the lounge’s sofa, sleeping against Hunk’s side or resting his back to Pidge’s. Shiro also got Keith’s cat like affection, with Keith looping arms during Altean movie nights and constant little affectionate taps of Keith’s knuckles against whatever part of Shiro Keith could reach.) 

Shiro’s time, however, was spent mainly in the bridge. His day was focused around planning, evaluation, and tactics. Allura, Coran and him spent many hours pouring over whole maps of regions of the galaxy, debating the pros and cons of this planet versus that one. 

So it really doesn’t surprise Shiro that one night when a dream rattles him awake, sweat beading at his brow and his arm burning in a fresh pain, his feet move instinctively from his dark confined room to the much more open bridge. 

The low emergency lights flare when Shiro enters, going from minimum power to a night-mode kind of display, giving the room a wash of bright baby blue. The whole room is filled with planets, maps of coordinates and battle notes fills the air. The hologram’s are kind of beautiful in the dark, emitting a low light as they turn slowly around the central point. Shiro blinks at them, the slowly rotating stars, not expecting them to be up and running. 

“Hello.” 

Shiro startles again, eyes blown wide as it takes a second to place the voice. It’s Lance. 

Lance looking like he just got caught with his hand in a cookie jar, sheepish expression as the planets around him update with paragraphs of information. 

“I’m filling in outdated info,” Lance says with a laugh “It's better than just wasting time while everyone else sleeps.” 

Shiro knows that someone has updated the maps, Allura had commented on it but Allura and him had assumed that Coran had gone in and done it. “Thank you.” Shiro says, meaning it. “I didn’t realize it was you or else I would’ve thanked you earlier.” 

Another synthetic laugh. Lance has a huge smile on his face as the planets shift around the two of them in a swirl. The planets near Lance begin to have popups, information filling in first in the runes Shiro has come to recognize as Altean and then with a simple switch in English so everyone on the ship could read the information presented. “Don’t worry about it.” Lance says, “It’s time that would’ve been wasted by a real person.” 

Shiro doesn't frown, his poker face is much too good for that, but he feels his gut clench at that statement. It's not wrong, technically, but the way Lance says it so offhandedly is just a little too quick. 

Shiro and Lance fall into a silence with Lance working on the map around him and Shiro getting lost in the rhythm of the workflow. Lance could work on two or three entries at once, and Shiro read as they filled in. 

It almost looked like a dance, the blue glow of the planets moving around a stationary sun, the spinning rotational push and pull of a universal constant. 

“What did you do before you got put into my arm?” Shiro asks, voice low and slow as not to disrupt the calm in the room. 

Lance laughs, the tinge of that computerized clip echoing in the end of it. “I was a communication monitoring AI. I looked over all the Galran messages in and out and monitored for patterns.” 

“Find anything interesting?” Shiro says, genuinely curious about Lance’s past. Lance didn’t really talk about himself, just about people he knew and liked and considered his family. The whole ship knew of the person who looked after Lance, (who Lance called his Mom), and various people who Lance considered his siblings. 

“I found you.” 

The dance of the planets around Lance stuttered, jerking half a step out of the time to a beat that Shiro can’t hear. 

“You found me?” Shiro asks, figuring it out even as Lance stays quiet. 

A memory finds Shiro, unbidden in the darkness of the room, the silence. 

Shiro finds himself in a dark, dank smelling room, he’s curled up shivering from the cold and he’s having trouble breathing through his nose so he’s crying, sobbing, breathing through his mouth. He’s alone for the first time in months, and he’s panicking about it. His captors don’t know how to ‘fix’ him, they’ve tried nearly everything that they can think of. 

He’s lonely, mostly, and after a week of no contact a voice manages to wiggle through the electronic pager system that's right inside his cell, the pager system that would inform him of food and water delivery. 

Shiro remember’s the voice being Lance’s, the same cadence and tone and volume. Shiro remembers distrusting and being wary and- 

He’s pulled out of the memory, he’s breathing hard and his hands are shaking. 

Lance isn't saying anything, the planets have stopped circling him, Lance’s entire attention was focused on Shiro, even if Lance wasn’t turned to face him. 

“You were the reason the Galra came to our system.” Shiro says, not as a question but as a fact. 

“I’ve already apologized. Four times.” Lance quips, his tone is defensive, his posture changing from neutral to arms crossed, shoulders pulled up. “I can apologize again if you want. I’m trying to make it up to you still, I didn’t know you were on that moon. I was getting signals from the 1980’s. I didn’t know.” 

Shiro believed him, he gets the feeling that Lance was telling the truth when he said he’s apologized four separate times. Shiro gets that feeling of dejavu he feels sometimes when in space, remembering something from his blackout year. 

Shiro is silent, eventually Lance’s planets pick back up as he continues his work after a minute or two. 

They spend another few silent moments like this, Lance working and Shiro trying to re-figure out feelings that his brain said needed to be sorted but his heart said that these thoughts had already been settled on. The emergency lights dimmed after a while, without true movement to set off the motion detector to keep the lights on. 

“Do.” A pause. “Do you remember anything from before we crash landed on earth?” Lance asks, almost cautiously. “Anything?” 

Shiro shakes his head, no. “Very minimal bits and pieces.” 

Lance smiles, and Shiro feels his gut clench again, his hearts screaming at him that Lance’s watery empty expression is fake, to console. Shiro’s mind doesn't tell him how to console however, and the conversation dies like that. 

It takes about an hour or two before Shiro finally feels sleepy enough to leave, get back to his room and try and snag an hour of sleep before the rest of the ship wakes up. 

Lance doesn't say anything as Shiro leaves, and Shiro doesn't look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Im busy and sorry but ehh im trying at least sorry so short will try fix later

**Author's Note:**

> speed writing time classes start in a week and I gotta pump this bad boi out like its the fifteenth hour of labor hoi boi.


End file.
